So to sum up the ideas so far I think we should begin with some sort of prelude showing the crew + ship in their dinky centrifugal-gravity ship battling, boarding and capturing the crew of another ship, and taking them prisoner. The bad guy's ship is destroyed in the battle beyond repair and they manage to kill the crew character guarding their cells, whilst the rest of the crew is investigating what they were fighting over: a ship floating alone in space. The prisoners take over the old ship, and outgunned make a run for it, so our crew is stuck with this ship.
Whilst investigating the ship they find some clues to it's past (terror Kahn bodies) and discover this AI which puts them into hyperspace.
They arrive in Immortal territory and are let go at first. They see this as an oppurtunity at first to use the ship to steal more immortal tech, but they fail and have to flee.
They are saved by alliance ships and due to debt thy have to pay back by using their ship to help the alliance against the immortals.
Also t some point the prisoner ship shows up, possibly in the alliance, and it's weird for them because that ship was like a crew member in itself and has now turned against them and been altered.
Sound good so far?
AI sabotages them, people die, they get boarded by terror Kahn and a whole lot of stuff can happen within this story arc. We just need to make sure we portray this in the perspective of how these event change the characters.

Theres old ship/prisoner ship which was the crews original one that they're used to but was taken over by their prisoners, and there's new ship with the crew that they found floating in space for and had to fight and take prisoners for.

I get that they're fighting over a ship. But the rest is a bit blurry. I can peice together most of it because I've been following this pretty closely, but I think it's in our best interests to have some clear terms and backstory to avoid confusion, both in audience and cast/crew.

The main characters in our crew in Ship A begin the series in a ship battle, vs the rival crew in Ship B in order to capture a mysterious but very valuable looking Ship C they found floating in space.
Ship A defeats ship B.
Ship A docks with Ship C, and most of the crew goes aboard to investigate. Ship A is left relatively unguarded.
Ship C is empty of people, but fully functional. There are immortal bodies, confirming that Ship C was originally an Immortal ship.
Meanwhile, Ship B's remaining crew take over Ship A.
Our crew in Ship C proceed to fight a hijacked Ship A (although it is there own) but Ship A flees.
The crazy AI (who seems nice at first but in a twist turns out to be a psycho) is activated during the battles and immediately jumps Ship C into hyperspace.

Part 2

Ship C exits in Immortal territory, and the crew think they're screwed. Luckily the Immortals don't detect the ship, and so the crew makes a hard decision to succumb to their greed and attempt to use this to their advantage.
In a failed piracy attempt, Ship C is damaged and is hunted by the Immortals, whilst the AI continues to jump them into more dangerous territories, and finally a large Immortal space station complex.
By coincidence due to the Immortals being distracted Ship A and several others show up and attack the station, and reveal themselves to be Alliance. Part 2 ends with tension between Ship A and Ship C.

Part 3

Ship A and Ship C avoid a destructive battle by coming to as truce as other ships back up Ship A. Ship C has no choice but to help the alliance in return for repairs, resources and to repay them for saving Ship C.

Things to think about:

These should not be interpereted as just a series of things that happen. They should be interpereted as events that change the main crew of our show. They go through a few changes, at the beginning and middle they are greedy, selfish and a bit wild. As the series progresses they mature and relationships in the crew get more intimate, and they all become more friendly with each other.

We should have a fighter squadron (maybe only a small one) cause dog fights are cool. The crew should be smallish (not much more than a dozen or so).

As with everything where this is even remotely possible, I'm afraid I must demand an antigravity battle scene.

Seriously though, if we have the artificial gravity shut off, how cool would it be to have people bouncing off of walls and stuff. Think enders game, but in the middle of a crowded spaceship. In the middle of a space battle.

thade wrote:As with everything where this is even remotely possible, I'm afraid I must demand an antigravity battle scene.

Seriously though, if we have the artificial gravity shut off, how cool would it be to have people bouncing off of walls and stuff. Think enders game, but in the middle of a crowded spaceship. In the middle of a space battle.

It'd be challenging on the animation side, but fun for the audience.

YES. And also to the dogfights...maybe around 8 main characters? (5-6 on main deck type thing, 1 in engine (scotty) and 1-2 pilots/troopers in fighters)

So here's my rough idea for crew archetypes. By my estimates, we'll need a few more than most people suggested if we want to cover all the bases. Alternatively, we could have the characters be part of a larger 'background' crew. I wasn't quite sure what people were going for.

Anyway, archetypes ahoy (always abuse alliteration):

Captain/Man-In-Charge (Depending on our approach, we may not want this to be a character.)
Engineer/Mechanic: There may need to be more than one of these
Pilot: Depending on ship size, this is often broken up, and sometimes the same as the captain.
Medic: Pretty Self explanatory
Grunts: If there's a lot of combat going on, we'll need grunts.
Gunners: If it's a small crew, this will likely overlap.
Fighter Pilots: Again, this may overlap.

I'm not sure what you all were going for in terms of total crew size vs. amount of characters, but my main concern is that it's hard to have a space battle without losing anyone on your side, and if we don't want to kill off a character in te early stages, large scale battles are going to become increasingly unrealisticly survivable.